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Saturday, October 29, 2011

The Beauty of Handwritten Letters

How long has it been since you wrote or received a handwritten letter?

When I was in my early twenties I had one of those annihilating love affairs one summer--the kind that change your life forever because they change YOU, much like (to borrow and paraphrase from "Like Water For Chocolate" by Laura Esquivel) dough is irreversibly and intrinsically changed through contact with heat. And much of that affair happened via handwritten letters--he happened to live across the continent from me. This was the early nineties, so no email yet. The phone bills were humongous, too.

For around four months we wrote letters to each other every day, this super-sexy and romantic lover (he quoted poetry to me--POETRY) and I. Sometimes more than one a day. The letters were delivered in stacks of three, four, sometimes more. And each was read and re-read again and again throughout the years until I finally lost them.

Yes, I think of handwritten letters most fondly. So when an amazing blogger friend at Writer In Transit started a handwritten-letter adventure, you can imagine I jumped at the chance. How does it work? We exchange letters and include a writing challenge or two (or three) that the recipient must complete. A few days ago I received her first letter with two awesome writing challenges: challenge #1 and challenge #2.

There's nothing quite so exciting, for people of my generation at least, as to receive a handwritten letter. I look forward to many many more!

2 comments
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Glad you FINALLY received the letter... after 10 weeks! PHEW!It lends a new meaning to the words "snail-mail". LOL!And a point of correction, it was Damyanti over at damyantiwrites.wordpress.com, who started the handwritten letter challenge. I simply responded, then extended the invite to other bloggers/writers.Gonna pop in to check out your challenge responses. *hugs*~MISH~